


Love is a Battle He'd Fight For.

by AllieisaWriter



Category: Greek Mythology, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 10:36:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllieisaWriter/pseuds/AllieisaWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One shot; can also be found on my lj. </p><p>Everyone thinks it's the ideal situation, marrying Aphrodite to Hephaestus. It is ideal, just not for Ares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is a Battle He'd Fight For.

**Author's Note:**

> something I wrote a long time ago and forgot about. For Allarica, the Aphrodite to my Ares. Enjoy.

She begins to take up every other thought of his, the lover with the hair of gold and legs that go on forever. He becomes distracted, distracted from his games, his family, his wars. Slowly, his dreams are taken up by her too, every waking moment and now he has no relief from her, those sensuous lips seem to call him. Rage and lust fill him simultaneously; his blood boils as though he were in battle. Was he in battle? A battle against what? Against whom?

Slowly, his sisters notice the change in him. Eris teases him mercilessly, and Hebe makes consoling noises as she draws his baths. He wants to deny it, he is not in love. Love can win battles, or break them, he knows. He wonders what she is doing to him. He feels weak, exposed, so unlike himself that he flies into rages and melancholy alternately. He hates her for making him like this, soft and needing; he hates her and the way she entices him, with those smiles which he feels are directed straight at him. No, he loves her. He loves the way she draws him into conversation, asking him about his expertise. He loves the way she represents everything that he should oppose, to people that don’t understand his realm completely. But Ares understands his own realm, he knows that people fight for love far more than they fight for hate; and sometimes the two emotions are so closely interlinked it doesn’t even matter. This is what she did to him, she made him think and consider and reflect but she also made his blood boil and make him want to pick up his mace and fight until he was exhausted and sweaty.

When the news hit him that she was promised to Hephaestus he had become inconsolable. Ignoring his mother, who knew how he felt he had marched outside where he accosted a training dummy until it was little more than rags and fluff. Hephaestus, the cripple. Hephaestus, the Ugly. He felt sad for her, so beautiful and kind, so well-meaning to be given away to him. The man who would never satisfy her in a million years. Wouldn’t Ares have been a better choice? Did he even want to marry her? What did he want?

The wedding was a happy affair for all but two. She smiled, and looked elegant and beautiful but there was a tragic quality to her today. And Ares, who watched the groom, not the bride. The groom who couldn’t walk properly towards the alter, the groom whose hands were calloused and too warm and holding onto the most wonderful hands ever created. For the first time he felt jealous of his “brother”, insanely so. How did he come to be in possession of such perfection?

And that night, he started a drunken brawl not being able to stand imagining what was going on behind the closed doors of Aphrodite and Hephaestus’ chambers. His brother was making her his. There was something insanely satisfying about his fists pounding flesh, getting ichor all over his knuckles, hearing the flesh smash against flesh, and pretend that Aphrodite would be waiting for him, crooning, calling him her brave boy as she kissed his bruised knuckles.

He went to bed alone, that night, dragged to his chambers by Hebe. Anyone else and he’d have backhanded them and carried on but not his little sister, who was all the sweetness that was left in the world now that Aphrodite had been taken away. She drew him a bath, and slowly removed his tunic and made him get in. To wash and be presentable. In times of heartache what was left but appearances—it was how Hera got by, wasn’t it? The man she loved always off with others. He lay his head on the soft goose down pillow and imagined it was Aphrodite holding him close to her, the way she used to. He wondered if they will ever lay together again, immortality was a long time.

Immortality with Hephaestus was even longer. Immortality without her was even longer than that. He dreamed of her that night too, adorned with flowers, all in white and her rosebud lips kissed him, soothed him, and caressed him. Their bodies moulded together, the image of perfection and completeness, wrestling and writhing in the act of torturous love. He cried and she cried, their tears mingling together as dreams of untainted love, pure love was crushed, but it did not mean they had lost the battle.

Ares awoke in the morning, confused as to whether he had dreamed her coming to him or if it was reality, or a mix of the two. He ached, and he knew that love was a battle he would fight for.


End file.
